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Former Koch funded climate skeptic finally faces reality

Richard Muller, a long standing cliamte change skeptic has finally accepted reality. Not only is climate chnge real, but human activity is causing most of it:

LA Times — In an opinion piece in Saturday’s New York Times titled “The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic,” Muller writes: “Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.

”The Berkeley project’s research has shown, Muller says, “that the average temperature of the Earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.”

And there was much rejoicing in the science-o-sphere, as ditto heads and the scam artists who prey on them were denied one more speck of cover. Not that that will stop the conservative godbot cheerleaders, these are professional liars, paid actors who aren’t about to cop to the facts anymore than a talking M&M will praise Hershey bars at Superbowl halftime.

The conmen and women will probably keep on mis-quoting Muller for decades no matter what he says now. But Muller is an actual scientists, and despite some weird and at times unwarranted mud slinging, he apparently does have an actual conscience and some dregs of personal integrity. Which is more than can be said for most Kochwhores.

Comments

Sorry, but I’m not that impressed with his conversion. The evidence was there years ago. And now he starts with what sounds like a reasonable position on the potential dangers, he only talks about the dangers he considers overstated. His failure to name anything that he considers to be a real danger of global warming makes me wonder if that will be his new schtick.

Anthony Watts, blogmeister of the climate denialist website “Watts Up With That” swore up and down that he’d accept whatever result Muller arrived at. When Muller said that the data was reliable, global warming is happening, and most of it is man-made, Watts condemned Muller as a tool of the nefarious warmistas trying to take Watts’ SUV away from him.

I don’t have any problems with someone who has real doubts about anything. Doubt is a good thing. And the fact that he has done reasearch and now faces up to his finding indicates that he was honest in his doubts. And although his epiphany came fairly late I can respect that.

But if I had been in his position I would have kept my mouth shut until I was damn sure that I can back up my claims. I mean claiming that thousands of climate scientiest have got it all wrong and that I know better – even though I have little training in this area – takes a lot of …erm… confidence in my abilities.

He also, if you read the NYT op-ed, continues to repeat numerous denier tropes, like “it may well habe been warmer during the MWP”. And as if that’s not bad enough, even his statement that “humans are almost entirely the cause” is backed up (in his mind) by nothing more than a correlation between temperature and CO2 levels. Really, dude? Are you constitutionally incapable of looking at all the other data, or what? He’s right in this case, but for a grossly incomplete reason.

@ Compuholic & Johnny Vector
Part of my problem with Muller is that he seems to discount everyone else’s work. It’s great that he did the work, but he would have said, “well, I can’t believe Darwin until I’ve been to the Galapagos.” What he is really showing is that his concerns were never warranted. And, as Johnny points out, he still has trouble accepting other scientists’ evidence, which doesn’t bode well for the future. Muller says that the discussion we need to have is what to do in the future. That’s a great point, but I’m afraid that his answer will always start as “that’s not a real concern, we don’t have to do anything.”

On Youtube. I’d also strongly recommend his Climate Denial Crock of the Week blog which has more up to date info and discussion of this. (Albiet I don’t always agree witheverything Greenman says eg. on nuclear. But great source on things HIRGO~wise.)